Once
by Neftzer
Summary: Three chapters set during the Tallahassee-era of Swanfire. Emma's need prompts Neal to seek out the help of someone from his past.
1. Chapter 1

It was the sort of state park of a size big enough to offer camping both primitive and with RV-hookups, and, more importantly, big enough for a yellow VW bug to get easily lost within. The sort of state park that a clever local would know just the right little-used road to drive in by where state government cut-backs had left the old gate unattended by park rangers. No one to count you as you came in, no ranger to ask to see your pass and ID, to collect the necessary fees, check hunting and fishing licenses.

Just a sneaky, quiet drive down a half-forgotten lane into what stood for wilderness in the World Without Magic.

Which was more than just fine by the two riding in the yellow bug. Yearly passes to this state's parks, they had not. ID — they had, but just this side of sketchy. Money for fees, licenses to hunt or fish? Surely you jest.

Emma had managed to pocket a half-pound sack of flour and a few other supplies at the 'last stop gas' station before the official North Gate into the park (which they'd driven past, in favor of the lesser-used, un-manned entrance). Salt and pepper packets courtesy of a variety of fast food joints and 7-Elevens that sold petrified bratwursts off a hot dog carousel and cold triangles of sandwiches suffering from freezer burn.

Neal picked the spot — there was no official fire pit, and if they were caught, they _might_ have had the money between them to pay the fine (on a _good_ day – this was not a good day), but not the ability to stand up to much of an identity check.

It was near a stream, and he had had no trouble snagging a few fish to bring back to where he'd left Emma. She was staring at a small pile of sticks as though she wished she could begin a fire with only the power of her mind.

"What's this?" he asked, throwing the three fish to the ground.

"You took the lighter," she reminded him. "Mine's gone dry." She waved the empty pink BIC in the air where he could see it held no fluid.

He patted himself down until he found his, rearranged her pile of sticks with some crunchy dry leaves underneath them and lit it. The tinder was dry, the evening was coming on, the wind was calm, and it took.

She watched as he cleaned the fish, clearly skeptical of the news skills she saw him using. She was all city girl. It had been hard enough to convince her to come out here—that it was a good idea. But her hunger had finally won out.

He got the fish onto the fire using some of the generic tinfoil he'd thought to lift at that last store, used nearly all of their salt and pepper packets in seasoning it, and asked for the flour.

"What're you gonna do with flour out here?" she asked, incredulous. "Make a birthday cake?"

He smiled, the smile he used when it was obvious to him she did not know the direction in which his mind was going. "Nah. Gonna make something for you—frybread," he reached for the Schwepps bottle he'd filled with stream water. "Best food on earth if you make it right."

Her eyebrow went up. "Building fires…surviving in the wild — what, you gonna tell me you were in the Army or something?"

His eyes slid over toward her at this crack. "Once, yeah," he admitted, though she could not have understood what he referred to. "I was almost a soldier. _Once_." It was a statement rendered honestly, but by the time he got to the end, she was  
grinning at him like an idiot, ready to make him laugh, clearly not understanding (how could she?) how dire the 'once' of that statement had been. And he could not help it, wanting to be able to laugh with her. He let the sorrow of that long-ago memory wash off him, and let himself grin back at her — his face a twitterpated mirror of her own.

They ate the fish — even as it was so hot it burned their fingers and tongues. They ate the frybread, though it was not made as well he would like to think he could make it under other circumstances and with an actual bowl to mix it in (and milk for the making of it). Things felt good. The night air, the smell and warmth of the fire, the sound of the stream nearby. The way the fire reflected off the glass in Emma's specs, like her eyes were dancing, blazing and alive.

The stars were out. And not like in the city, here. Here you could actually seem them, nothing else competing with them in the sky or on the ground.

"See that there?" he asked her, one arm around her, other elbow propping him part-way up. He told her its name.

"You are such a bull-shitter," she called him out, half-laughing. He felt the vibration of her laughter she was so close to him. "It is _not_. That's not even the name of a real constellation, is it." There was no question mark on the end of her question.

"No!" he protested. "No! It is, I swear." Maybe he had gotten turned around, mixed up. Maybe he was thinking of NeverLand astronomy. Which, of course, (he knew) made it no less real. "Look, look - I'll wish up on it."

"Wish upon a star?" she asked him, forcing her voice to sound overly-breathless and dreamy. "Does that work with all the girls?" She rapidly batted her eyelashes.

_Damn. Whoever said boys don't make passes at girls who wear glasses? _Never met Emma Swan.

"Does it 'work'?" he asked. "Nah," he answered, unable to hold back his grin, increasing his squeeze on her. "Just a makes 'em horny."

She was already turned toward him, her mouth close enough to his to breathe in the exhale of his merry laughter.

They kissed until she had to take her glasses off to keep them from getting broken, until he had to take a moment to turn away and make sure they weren't about to roll into the fire.

Confident that the safety of personal objects and exposed flesh was satisfied, they proceeded on.

* * *

Early in the morning, an hour still to day break, Neal awoke to thinking he _had_ actually rolled into the fire — or at least into what was left of it. His side was blazing hot, and he was in a sweat. He wondered if Emma had noticed — she was, after all, sleeping immediately beside him — when he realized that neither he nor the long-cold fire was the source of the heat: she was.

She was hot to the touch, as though a furnace were inside of her. When he went to touch her skin she moaned, not fully awake, but obviously in both pain and discomfort from the fever she was in. There was no thermometer among their erratic possessions, of course, no way to find out how high it was, but something inside of him told him that it was dangerously so, and that whatever was causing it was not going to be fixed merely by his buying some aspirin from where it was usually kept behind a cashier's counter.

"Emma," he said, trying to get her to speak to him, to tell him where it hurt. "Em — wake up — talk to me, babe."

She made something of a slurred attempt at answering him, but cut herself off with a wince and obvious stab of pain.

"My side," she choked out, as if someone were torturing her. He could not prevent her from curling up into a ball.

He gave up and let her do it, scrambling to find a bottle with something liquid left in it. No success. He grabbed an empty one and raced over toward the stream, no care to the cleanness of the water running in it. He held the bottle's opening below the flow and filled it, carrying it back dripping with the cool wet of the water, his wrist and shirt cuff soaked as well.

She was obviously in no condition to take the bottle from him, so he held it to her lips, and she drank, though plenty spilled out over her chin.

He tried to make use of his wrist and the water on it, dabbing it to the back of her neck, but he saw quickly such attentions were pointless. No matter how much of her clothing he removed, no matter the cool of the early morning — he could carry her to the stream and lower her into it, but the fever itself was not going away. And even if it did, the pain would not.

She would have to be moved, and quickly.

He threw their few belongings under the hood of the Bug without a care for breaking them or denting the car, and maneuvered her over and into the passenger's seat. He had to get out of this forsaken wilderness as quick as he could, and get her onto help.

**...TBC...**


	2. Chapter 2

Five a.m. and he'd driven like the devil to get here. He pounded as hard as he could on the rectory door, with frequent looks back toward the sedate, tree-lined city street where he had haphazardly (and willfully against posted signage) parked the Bug with Emma still in a fever within it.

Finally, after several more knocks and two turnings of the bell, the door was cracked open in answer. A young man, obviously only just now attaching his priestly collar stared, warily, out at him.

"I need to talk to Father Frank," Neal said without greeting him.

The young man looked concerned. "It is very early," he said. "May _I_ help you, my son?"

"Yeah." Neal rearranged his feet, looked down and away and then jerked his head back up to glare at the priest, sensing he was about to have a fight on his hands. "You can get me Father Frank."

Before the young priest could speak again (his expression seemed to show that he about to refuse), a hand gripped over his shoulder where it was visible to Neal where the door was cracked open, and someone behind him spoke, the sound of this new arrival's words muffled to Neal.

At this, the young priest stepped back within the rectory, revealing an older man, abundantly greyed, and also in a priestly collar, a woolen suit coat around his shoulders. "Bae?" he asked, thinking that he recognized Neal. His mouth almost smiled, before a concerned crease settled upon his brow. "Are you alright?"

"Father Frank," Neal greeted him, a smile of relief crossing his face, but any expression of his satisfaction was short-lived. "Yeah, I'm good. Good. But I need your help."

"Come in, then, come in," the priest encouraged him, standing aside with the invitation.

"No," Neal disagreed, throwing up his hands to wave it off. "I can't. I need you to come out — to my car. I can't leave her."

The priest, used to circumstances sometimes verging on dire, asked no questions and put up no resistance, instead following Neal speedily back to the yellow VW Bug. Once there, without asking permission or asking for any further direction, upon sighting Emma he had the door open and his hand upon her cheek and forehead, his sharp eyes taking in her hand, balled like a fist, which she was attempting to bury in her side.

"What do I do?" Neal asked, anxious concern painted all over him. "I don't know what to do."

"The ER, of course," the priest answered, sincere worry on his face. "And soon, I'd say. Do you need directions? Shall I call for an ambulance? That might be best."

Neal did not answer but asked another question. "What do you think it is?"

"Appendicitis, by the looks of it. She'll need a surgery. I'll go with if you like, but we can't wait, Bae," the father's eyes encouraged urgency. "_She_ can't wait."

"But that's the thing," Neal told him, nervously switching his weight from one leg to the other. "That's the – I _can't_. Can't take her to the hospital." Knowing the urgency of what needed to happen and his present quandary about it set him on edge, his posture jittery, him unable to stand in place.

"If it's a matter of money," the priest began," we can sort that out after. There are funds set up –"

"It's not money," Neal answered quickly, his eye to Emma's blonde head beyond the car door window. He stretched his hand out and put it on the roof of the Bug, the closest he could get in the moment to touching her.

"Well then, its –" the priest began, and cut himself off.

"Her ID," Neal confessed, lightly hitting a balled fist against the roof of the car. "It's not so good. There's no way –" he looked back to Emma within.

The priest listened and then closed his eyes, before opening them and taking another look at the girl inside the car. "And if they find out who she is, she'll -?"

"Go back into the system."

Father Frank visibly relaxed. "I thought you were going to say 'go back to jail'."

"Emma? Jail? No!"

"So, social services."

"Foster care," Neal confessed with a wince. "She ran away. They'll send her back. I can't do that to her. Not when she -"

"Foster care?!" the priest asked, figuring out the facts. "So she's -–"

"A minor. She's seventeen."

Even a priest could see by Neal's face that this girl in his car was more than just a good friend to him. "How could you, Bae? _Seven_teen?"

Neal shrugged with a nervous energy. It was hard to hold a conversation when he knew Emma was in such pain. He spoke with an exasperated and under-stress intensity. "I knew her ID was forged — whose isn't? I knew it wasn't a top notch job. But that's NOT the same as knowing she was a minor. I, just — I can't lose her. Not to that, not back to what she ran away from." He brought up his eyes to meet the priest's. "And she can't lose me, Father. We're all each other has. Me, her, this car."

The priest looked at him, then back to Emma.

"I know you know people —" Neal began.

"Hush," said the priest, motioning with his hands for Neal to keep his voice down. "Get in the car. Drive where I tell you to go."

**...TBC...**


End file.
